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Activists Aim For Cluster Munitions Free World By 2030

08 September 2016

Lisa Schlein

VOA News

FILE - In this still image made from video taken May 19, 2015 provided by the Syrian Center for Demining and Rehabilitation, a volunteer deminer collects several cluster munitions from the ground in Daraa, Syria.

A three-day conference on strengthening the treaty banning the use of cluster munitions has ended on a high note. More than 100 state parties have agreed to set a target date of 2030 for the clearance of these weapons from contaminated states.

Twenty-four countries are contaminated by cluster munitions, a type of bomb that scatters little bombs over an area, killing and maiming people indiscriminately. Unexploded bombs remain a threat to life long after a conflict is over.

FILE - Schoolchildren attend an awareness campaign teaching them to identify mines and unexploded cluster bombs at the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) headquarters in the town of Naqoura in southern Lebanon, April 4, 2014.

More than 100 countries have ratified or acceded to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use, transfer and stockpiling of the weapons.

The president of the convention, Henk Cor van der Kwast, says governments at this week's meeting agreed to strive for a world free of cluster munitions by 2030.

“That does imply that states that are affected work harder to get in time to clear the areas where cluster munitions still [are]. Also, for donor countries to work precisely towards this deadline and see where they can help affected countries to clear their territories,” he said.

Van der Kwast says 12 of the 14 contaminated member states have relatively few cluster munitions and should be able to have them cleared by 2020. However, he says it will take Laos and Iraq, which are heavily infested, until 2030 to complete the job.

He says the conference welcomes President Obama’s decision to give Laos $90 million over a three-year period for cluster munitions clearance.

U.S. President Barack Obama greets workers in a tour displaying tools used to clear land of unexploded ordnance at the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise (COPE) Visitor Centre in Vientiane, Laos, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016.

The meeting also has condemned the use of cluster munitions in Syria and Yemen. Megan Burke, the director of the Cluster Munition Coalition, calls this a very important outcome because it adds to the growing stigma of the use of all cluster munitions.

“That exact stigma was what led the cluster munition producer Textron in the United States to announce last week that given the fact that there is basically no more market for cluster munitions, they will cease to produce cluster munitions by March of next year,” said Burke.

FILE - A boy holds unexploded cluster bombs after jet shelling by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the al-Meyasar district of Aleppo February 21, 2013.

Burke says the impact of this will be huge because it means the United States will no longer be a producer of these weapons. As a consequence, she says, it will become more difficult for other countries to produce cluster munitions and will strengthen the norm against their use.